Sports create tight bond for Bluffton's Fraziers

Lawrence Conneff/Bluffton Today Jason Frazier, left, and his sons C.J., right, and J.J. take a break from a workout Monday at the Bluffton Recreation Center. C.J. will be a freshman quarterback this fall at Newberry College.

C.J. Frazier was in town visiting his father, Jason, 11 years ago when a trip to the Bluffton Recreation Center forever changed their relationship.

Jason Frazier stopped by to visit a friend, who asked the former Hilton Head Island High star quarterback to coach a local youth football team. Frazier politely declined.

With C.J. living more than two hours away in Florence with his mother, Brandy Strong, Jason said he could not make that commitment. He needed the weekends to spend time with his son.

But C.J. had other plans. When they got ready to leave, he told Jason he would love to play football for his father.

“I get back in the car and C.J. goes, ‘Daddy, I want to play football,’ ” Jason said Monday at the rec center. “So I spun around in the parking lot and came back here.”

C.J. moved to Bluffton full-time to live with Jason. And thus began the younger Frazier’s development into a college quarterback.

‘He could do anything’

Jason Frazier was a natural athlete.

He did a little bit of everything at Hilton Head High, leading the Seahawks to their only Lower State football championship in 1990 and starring on the basketball team. But his best sport was baseball.

“He was just a pure athlete,” C.J. Frazier said. “He could have played receiver, running back, anything. He could do anything.”

Frazier, a catcher, was drafted out of high school by the Florida Marlins in the 38th round in 1992 and spent two seasons playing for the franchise’s rookie league team. He hit only .083 in the minors and moved on to an independent league team.

When C.J. was born in July 1995, however, Jason decided it was time to hang up his cleats. He returned to his hometown of Bluffton and worked in the concrete business, savoring his weekend time with C.J. after Brandy moved to Florence.

“Baseball was done when he was born,” Jason said. “By the time he was born I would rather have been a father than somebody that was chasing a dream.”

Jason threw himself into coaching when C.J. moved here, serving as his head coach in football, basketball and baseball. He and his wife Stephanie, who have been married 11 years, would welcome 20 or so Bluffton Bulldogs football players into their home before Saturday games.

Newberry-bound

C.J. worked tirelessly on his fundamentals, as both a quarterback and a 3-point shooter in basketball, and Jason was determined to give his son a brighter athletic future than he had years before.

“I felt that I had the talent, but not the fundamentals,” Jason said. “My goal with him was always to make sure he was fundamentally sound.”

C.J. did not develop into the explosive athlete his father had been, but he became a deadly accurate quarterback who smashed all the school passing records in two and a half seasons as Bluffton High’s starter. He joined his father as a Lower State champion quarterback in 2011 and also was a four-year starter on the basketball team.

In February, C.J. signed a national letter of intent to play football this fall at Newberry College. He said he soaked up all of Jason’s sports knowledge, and his pro baseball experiences, from the time he was 7.

“I wanted to know what that life is like,” C.J. said. “He gives it to me in a realistic aspect. They’re 18- and 19-year-old kids that are there trying to make a living. It’s not just about having fun playing baseball. It changes.

“The biggest thing about it is he left right out of high school to go play baseball, so he’s always taught me to make sure that I get my education no matter what.”

Jason’s ‘shadow’

Dave Adams has watched the Fraziers’ relationship grow from the time C.J. moved to Bluffton.

The Bluffton High athletic director was Jason’s quarterbacks coach at Hilton Head. He was the Bluffton head coach when the school opened in 2004, and Jason and C.J. were regulars at the games.

“They would come to football games and any time they walked through that gate, C.J. had a football in his hands,” Adams said. “Jason would say, ‘Show coach Adams how to run the counter play,’ and his fakes and footwork would be right on. He was always by Jason’s side. He was like his shadow.”

The duo rarely had trouble balancing its father-son and player-coach relationships, they said. Rather than separate sports from their family life, they made their teams’ exploits a constant topic of conversation.

That was C.J.’s passion, and Jason was more than happy to oblige.

“I wanted to be a sports nerd. I wanted to know as much as I could about every sport, so I was always trying to pick his mind,” C.J. said. “I’m sure he tried to change the subject sometimes, but I would ask him questions. I just wanted to know everything I possibly could.”

Jason said the only rough patch for C.J. came the summer before his freshman year at Bluffton High, when Brandy died at 32 from complications related to diabetes. C.J. had trouble concentrating in school for about a year, and the football field where he and Jason worked out became a safe haven.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, to tell him his mom had passed,” Jason said. “He’s a warrior. That kid’s been battling.”

Father and son will continue to train together this summer, but Jason says his focus will turn to supporting his son’s college education. Football has given C.J. a chance to earn a degree and his father wants him to take full advantage of the opportunity.

“The football stuff becomes minor now,” Jason said. “Now, he’s got to close the deal on that degree. I’m not really even worried about the football. That’s something that’s going to take care of itself. If he really wants to be great at it, that’s up to him.

“My job is to push and make sure he is going to be a good student and a good citizen while he’s up at Newberry.”

In the meantime, Jason said, he will likely return to coaching in the next year when his younger son J.J. starts playing football. The 6-year-old J.J. will have an extra mentor in his college-bound brother.

When it comes to C.J.’s football career, Jason will try to be content with making fall trips to watch him play at Newberry. But he acknowledges it is difficult to imagine not being able to spend time with his son every day.

“I’m never going to be able to fully let go, because I love the game and I love coaching the game,” Jason said. “I live and die with every throw. That’s the way it is.”

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